<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>where does love go, she said by liraels</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24491485">where does love go, she said</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/liraels/pseuds/liraels'>liraels</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Killing Eve (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, I'm literally just yearning...................., Post S3 Finale, ballroom dancing..........yes again, i have so much villaneve inside my chest right now i had to get it out, i think i have a thing for writing epilogues</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:43:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,150</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24491485</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/liraels/pseuds/liraels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The biggest decision of Eve’s life doesn’t trigger any fireworks. It doesn’t even end with a kiss. </p><p>“You like ice cream?” Villanelle says, and her smile sharpens – sharpens like focus, like clarity, and not like a knife. </p><p>“Yeah,” Eve says. “Yeah, I do.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>454</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>where does love go, she said</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>e</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The biggest decision of Eve’s life doesn’t trigger any fireworks. It doesn’t even end with a kiss.</p><p>Walking back to Villanelle is like walking through a dream. Her chest is taut, twinging as she takes step after step, but her limbs feel loose and disconnected. She strains her ears above the murmuring of pedestrians and the rumble of traffic – she’s not sure what she’s trying to hear, Villanelle’s voice, her breath, a heartbeat? But Villanelle says nothing, and Eve says nothing; she lets the sounds of the city seep into the dream, as if they might tell her what on earth to do next.</p><p>In a movie, they would kiss. Eve would be running, she’d probably knock Villanelle to the ground with the force of their collision. They’d lie on the pavement for a second that felt like an hour and the world – the cars, the pedestrians, the bustle of the London evening – would wink out around them. They would kiss and Villanelle would sigh and Eve would never want to open her eyes again.</p><p>In a different movie, probably a bad one, they would jump. Eve would grasp Villanelle’s hands and kiss her knuckles, so as not to meet her eyes. Then Villanelle would climb atop the railing, balanced and lithe as a dancer. Someone passing might think Villanelle was going to take the plunge alone, or that Eve would push her and watch her fall. They would be wrong, because of course Villanelle would take Eve’s hand and pull her up beside her, steadying her. They’d spend a long moment suspended on the brink, but then they would jump. They would jump just to see death reflected in each other’s eyes.</p><p>Eve’s life has never been a movie. Not even a bad one.</p><p>When Villanelle is so close that Eve could reach out to touch her – she could pull her closer or push her away – they both stop. And stare. They don’t kiss, and they definitely don’t jump. Eve wonders when Villanelle’s eyes stopped simply reflecting Eve’s own face back at her, when they started to shine with a light of their very own. She wonders what ships think when they pass in the night, perhaps beneath this very bridge. She wouldn’t know; she’s one for crashing instead of just passing by.</p><p>“You like ice cream?” Villanelle says, and her smile sharpens – sharpens like focus, like clarity, and not like a knife.</p><p>“Yeah,” Eve says. “Yeah, I do.”</p><p>And so Eve’s life tilts on its axis, and it should feel disorienting, but it feels just like slotting neatly into place. It’s good. It’s monumental and it’s normal. They don’t touch, they don’t kiss, no one stabs anyone and they don’t jump to their deaths. They go get ice cream, and Eve doesn’t even think about licking Villanelle’s chocolate gelato off her lips. Not once.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>v</em>
</p><p> </p><p>London is a shithole.</p><p>Villanelle reminds herself of this as she walks the streets back to her hotel. Those streets are dull and dank as ever. The air is heavy with the same smog that smothers Paris, and Moscow, and Istanbul, but the London smog irritates her most, just because it’s London.</p><p>She’s taken a winding, indirect path, and she has to repeat her mantra once again – <em>London is a shithole</em> – when she emerges from a thicket of concrete residential blocks and sees the Thames spread out before her. Headlights tracking across the gleaming Tower Bridge.</p><p>Villanelle is not sentimental. She’s never understood <em>romance</em> in the common or garden sense. She also very much knows that London is a shithole.</p><p>But she does lean against the railing and look out across the water to the lights of Tower Bridge for more than a few minutes. For more than a few minutes, she stands still.</p><p>She left Eve at Waterloo Station. Eve was awkward about it, Villanelle was probably awkward, too, if she noticed that kind of thing about herself. Which she doesn’t. She stared too long at the spot of creamy pistachio at the corner of Eve’s mouth, told her to <em>Get home safe.</em></p><p><em>Or what? </em>Eve said in one of her fits of boldness, words stumbling from her lips.</p><p>When Villanelle replied, <em>Or, you know. I’ll kill you</em>, Eve smiled bright and wide. She never used to make Eve smile. So much wasted time.</p><p><em>Not if I kill you first</em>. And they parted.</p><p>Something settles in Villanelle’s chest as she looks across the Thames. It’s heavy, and soft, and still, and most of all it’s complicated – inimical to the simple feelings Villanelle is used to. She scans the deserted bank and the empty streets. There are no immediate threats, but she still feels ill at ease.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>e</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Eve sits in her apartment with a glass of wine and tells herself this is a normal Friday evening. It could be normal – God knows this is how she’s spent every Friday night since…well. It certainly <em>looks</em> normal. She glances every so often at what she can see of the lamplit street below, all hazy and orange through the window she’s never cleaned.  </p><p>She’s made plenty of decisions before, dozens upon dozens of decisions leading farther from her life before and further into that complicated place beyond. But all those choices – taking the job with Carolyn, meeting with Anna, jumping on a plane to Paris, taking on Villanelle at MI6, kissing her on that bus – they hadn’t <em>felt</em> like choices. Not in the moment, at least. They had felt like instinct, born from obsession, from animal fixation.</p><p>Villanelle on the bridge, though, turning around…Eve thinks it’s the first real choice that she’s made in her life.</p><p>She drinks her wine. Tonight, if she misses Villanelle, well. For once, that’s fine. Eve lets herself feel it.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>v</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Villanelle wakes to an empty hotel room and a text.</p><p>
  <em>I’ve booked us dance lessons. 9pm. I’ll meet you.</em>
</p><p>She spends the morning shopping for a suit fit for a ballroom. It takes her hours, but she finds the perfect three-piece – all sharp creases and shoulder pads. She doesn’t care what Eve wears, not even if it clashes with baby blue.</p><p>She spends the afternoon making preparations. By evening, she’s moved most of her money into new accounts, acquired an extra passport, and gone through three separate burner phones. The Twelve will catch up to her soon, but before that happens Villanelle insists on just one carefree night to do as she wishes. She’s stubborn that way. One night with Eve, and then.</p><p>At half eight, there’s a soft knock on the door of her hotel room. Villanelle opens the door with the barrel of a gun poking out of her suit jacket – Eve won’t be offended.</p><p>Eve isn’t offended, she catches sight of the gun and laughs. Villanelle knows everything there is to know about laughing; it’s difficult to imitate, but her favourite thing to practice. Often, the difference between a successful or failed cover is in the laugh – too loud, too soft, too grating, too hollow, and the entire persona falls apart. As a child, she laughed in the shower, again and again until she got it sounding right.</p><p>Eve’s laugh is something else. Inimitable. Villanelle wants to take it, hold it, tuck it away for later – not to practice and refine, but simply to listen to.</p><p>“I didn’t give you my hotel,” she says, “but you always manage to find me.”</p><p>Eve shrugs. God, her shoulders look great in that dress. Turns out Villanelle does care what Eve wears. “It’s what I do. You ready?”</p><p>“Of course. I woke up like this.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>e</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It’s the same dance hall. Eve will never tell Villanelle the lengths she went to in order to book, last minute, into tonight’s beginner ballroom lesson. If Eve wanted an excuse to see Villanelle as soon as she could, if she wanted a proper <em>reason</em>, something to justify it to herself – that’s her own problem to get over.</p><p>“So, I was that bad?” Villanelle murmurs into Eve’s hair. Tonight is supposed to be waltz night, and their instructor did advise that keeping one’s partner at a slight distance was recommended for beginners. Villanelle immediately pulled Eve as close as she had the last time, though, and Eve isn’t one to object. Her trodden-on toes are necessary casualties.   </p><p>“We were pretty bad,” Eve says. “Not even relatively, but…objectively. We got some looks.”</p><p>“Ah, but I think they were <em>jealous</em> looks.”</p><p>“What,” Eve laughs, adjusting her hand on Villanelle’s waist. Her palms are uncharacteristically sweaty. Villanelle doesn’t seem to mind. “Jealous of who?”</p><p>“Me, of course.” There’s one further disadvantage to the tight stance they’re waltzing in, beyond the bruised toes. Eve can’t see the glint in Villanelle’s eyes as she smiles. She shifts a little, tilting to brush Villanelle’s neck with her chin, and breathes in.</p><p>The song changes from soft piano to something symphonic, slightly faster, more sensual. The instructor waltzes past but does not comment on their – almost certainly awful – technique. He seems to sense that they aren’t really here for the dance lessons.</p><p>Villanelle’s whisper sends a violent shiver down Eve’s spine, “I’ll need to be on the move, tomorrow.”</p><p>Eve concentrates on her steps for a minute. There’s little point in it; they’ve regressed back into aimless swaying. “You’re safe from them tonight?”</p><p>Villanelle sighs. It’s a new sound – a new feeling that Eve feels in Villanelle’s whole body. She wonders if Villanelle has ever sighed before. “Probably not,” Villanelle says. “Hard to know what they know and when they started to know it. Tomorrow morning, I’ll go.”</p><p>Eve wants to ask <em>where? </em>Instead, “How?”</p><p>“Might hitchhike, for a while. Get to a regional airport. Then…I was thinking, I haven’t had a good moussaka since I killed that bureaucrat in Athens. Which is ages. So.”</p><p>“No, I meant…How can you…” Eve isn’t sure how to say it – <em>how can you leave me now?</em> So, she doesn’t. She smooths her hand along the side of Villanelle’s suit jacket. The baby blue <em>totally</em> clashes with her burgundy dress. She likes it.</p><p>Suddenly, Villanelle is pressing them apart, and Eve can see her eyes. There’s no glint in them. Villanelle stops dancing, and Eve inevitably steps on her foot.</p><p>“Hey, what–“</p><p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p><p>Eve is acutely aware of the dancers spinning around them, the music still playing, the bright lights above. She is also aware of Villanelle’s fingertips spidering across her scalp, of Villanelle’s arm pulling tight across the small of her back, of VIllanelle’s mouth, soft and wet and slow – <em>so this is what that feels like</em>…</p><p>The kiss on the bus was nothing like this. Nothing, ever, has been anything like this.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>v</em>
</p><p> </p><p>That complicated feeling settles again in Villanelle’s chest. She lets it sit for a moment, stewing, before pulling back. Eve’s breath against her lips is hot, but Villanelle fights back a shiver. She looks at Eve’s nose and feels the urge to kiss it, which is odd. She’s never kissed a nose before.</p><p>The song changes, something slower again, a chamber piece. Villanelle settles back into Eve and tries to block out the room with her hair. After she steps on Eve’s foot again, they resume their slow, rhythmic steps.</p><p>Villanelle listens to Eve’s breathing for a minute, before saying, “Good, huh?”</p><p>She gets a snigger for that. “Not bad, no.”</p><p>“I’m a woman of many talents.”</p><p>“I know you are.” Eve’s voice is slightly hoarse. “With a notable exception.”</p><p>“Hey, I’m a fast learner.”</p><p>“Are you? You just kicked my ankle again.”</p><p>Villanelle huffs. “Yeah, for the first time in <em>five whole minutes</em>. You were right, maybe, it’s never too late to acquire new skills.”</p><p>Eve’s hand tightens around Villanelle’s. “No,” she says. “No, it’s never too late.”</p><p>They continue stepping and spinning, slowly, jerkily. Villanelle works her jaw and worries at a lip and manages not to kick Eve for another two songs.</p><p>Then, Eve says what Villanelle has always been waiting to hear: “Do you want to get out of here?”</p><p> “Absolutely.”</p><p>Abruptly, Eve pulls out of their embrace and marches off the dance floor in that determined way of hers. She doesn’t look back, but Villanelle follows.</p><p>Out of the dance hall, in the open, shitty London air, Villanelle looks at Eve and Eve looks back and it’s awkward again, for a second. But just a second. Their third kiss takes place against the cold brick façade of the dance hall and is even better than the second.</p><p>At one point, Eve pulls back, and asks suddenly, “Where? Where will you go?”</p><p>Villanelle’s gaze catches on the furrow between Eve’s eyebrows. “If I told you, you wouldn’t get the chance to come find me,” she says. Then she kisses Eve’s nose.</p><p>Eve laughs – <em>ah</em> – and she sounds wonderfully breathless when she says, “Of course. Where’s the fun in that?”</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>